It's kind of like saying to a patriot we're changing the American flag to a hammer and sickle. Suck it up.

This remake doesn't even make sense. Even if the time line has been changed, when Kirk's father dies, the previous point of time did not. Before the Romulans had come through the Black Hole, the time line had not changed and there would be no reason why Khan would be any different than what the original series had made him to be.

If JJ had any brains, he would have picked up one of the other episodes and made a film instead of taking an already highly successful movie and re-making it.

No it’s not. It’s pointing out that they hold the show in too high a reverence. The fans really are a big part of why Trek canon because an unwieldy mess, they’re the ones that started keeping track of which button Sulu pushed. TOS had no real canon to speak of, major parts of Trek (including this whole “Federation” thing) were popped in after the show was running. It’s obsessive fans that analyzed every frame and tried to turn a show that really had no cross episode continuity into a cohesive structure. Then Rodenberry went and encouraged them by trying to solidify the canon in TNG and thus the albatross was born.

Back in the day “reboots” were common. Except nobody called them reboots, everybody just understood that the new Flash Gordon series/ serial/ comic wasn’t going to try to pick up the continuity of any of the ones that came before. Everything was stand alone, even when it had familiar names.

Who says Khan’s any different? He’s in different CIRCUMSTANCES but we don’t know if the character changed.

I agree he shouldn’t have picked up Khan. ESPECIALLY not for the second movie. I understand the temptation, Khan’s one of the best characters in the history of Trek. But this puts him on a bad path of mirroring the first movies, should have picked up somebody else.

Trek fans prevent that. There’s a ridiculously obsessive crowd of fans in Trek that demand every frame be worshiped as tight canon. They’re the ones that still wind up hassling Takei and Koenig for pushing the “wrong” button. Once Roddenberry decided to placate that crowd in TNG and really try to tighten up the canon the bad path was set. Just look at the incredible whining that came when the Enterprise communicators were revealed to be smaller than the TOS ones. I think that hew and cry right there was why any smart writer that gets tied to Trek would want to reboot, the canon crowd cannot be pleased, best to cut them off.

Remaking or rebooting films is fine if you don’t really care about the characters. Star Trek fans love their characters and to make this horrific mistake is just unforgivable. Ricardo Montalban is Khan. To have some English twit play the role is sacrilege.

Sorry but out in the actual entertainment business remaking and rebooting is the norm. Ricardo Montalban is dead, he ain’t doing anymore Khan, but that’s no reason for the character to go on a shelf. One nice thing about having a brit play the character is that at least the accent can make sense, lots of Indians with British accents, not many with Mexican. And anybody that doesn’t like it there’s the Stephen King rule: the old version is out there and available.

Part of the problem is as a franchise ages the fans are willing to forgive more sins. Truth be told Trek was NEVER really good. Half the episodes of TOS, including most of season 3, stink. They’re hackneyed, cliche (even at the time) with actually very bad acting from most of the cast. But we love it, so we forgive it it’s occasional “brain, brain and brain, what is brain” because there’s Space Seed and Tribbles.

And of course the tradition continues after that, the first 3 season of TNG are atrocious, first half of season 4 is pretty good, but then for the second half they did a bunch of single character episodes and we quickly found out that Picard and Data were the only characters that could actually carry a story. 5, 6 and 7 are mostly pretty good, but of course it was during TNG we learned that all holodeck episodes are horrid.

DS9 comparatively started off pretty strong, and got better every season, probably the closest Trek ever got to an actually good show from beginning to end. they even pulled off a couple of god holodeck eps. Then there’s Voyager. Worst show ever. Then Enterprise which, in spite of the whining of continuity worshipers, was actually pretty good, until the temporal cold war started, then it went to crap.

And in this world, where probably 70% of the content was crap, crap many of us love but still crap. People boldly declare that JJ ruined Trek. Is it different? Sure. Not as smart as Trek’s higher ideals? Yes. But is it as dumb as Gamesters of Triskelion? No. And it’s a damn sight better than Voyager. And like a lot of the best Trek it’s a fun ride.

You bring in Star Wars. We can see the same thing. Everybody now claims Jar Jar destroyed the series, to which I say one word: Ewoks. Really if you look at the original trilogy the first movie is OK, kind of fun, kind of dorky, but when the legend of Lucas’ grand plan comes up always remeber Luke hitting on Leia. Then we get Empire, great movie all the way up until “I am your father Luke” which in and of itself wasn’t bad but it put the series on a bad path. Then comes Return, which just stinks. That’s where we get the repercussions of Darth Daddy, made worse with sister Leia; Han gets reduced to comic sidekick... and Ewoks. And yet somehow people boldly declare Jar Jar killed it.

The lesson being, objects in the rear view mirror ain’t nearly as good as they appear.

Compared to what was out there at the time, it was genius plus it was hopeful, in that humanity had a future.

People didn't expect to watch Shakespeare. They wanted some entertainment and Star Trek gave them that.

TNG are atrocious,

That's because Gene Roddenberry tried to make the future too much of a utopia.

People boldly declare that JJ ruined Trek.

Yes, because he's incestuous when it comes to story telling. ( He's not alone in this and not the worst offender but it gets annoying. ) Try something different, outside of what has already been written. Don't destroy what was good in the process of making something new. I think people who reboot must have limited imagination and want a quick buck. In a universe of infinite possibilities, why are they stuck playing with the same old stuff?

What was good about the old series was how the characters developed, especially in the movies of 2, 3 and 4. Today's movies suck because they are so quick to tell the story, too much action and not enough good dialog. Movies today don't want to build up the characters or their relationships. They only want explosion after explosion then a sex scene.

I am your father Luke which in and of itself wasnt bad but it put the series on a bad path

Here is where I agree with you on that. I was like, ok Darth is Luke's father but then Timothy Zahn went on to write more books on Star Wars series and he used Palpatine as the bad guy again, although it was his clone but still.. A whole galaxy of evil and he had to recycle palpatine?

Then Zahn used the Jedi "twins" of Han and Leia. It's like really? Are all the descendants of Anakin going to be twins? No triplets just to shake things up?

I dunno, I guess that's why I'm off science fiction... It's not as fun as it use to be.

Understand with all my criticism I still love Trek, but as a QA person I look at warts, it’s my job and I’m good at it.

The primary problem TOS had is that it was really two different shows. There’s the show that built the legend, it really could tell very good thought provoking SF when they took the time to actually write it, and there’s even good less thought provoking episodes. Then there’s the other show, the cheeseball SF show that cranked out some really dumb SF poorly. I will often sing the praises of Gene Coon (aka “the other Gene”) for being the guy that gave us a lot of what makes Trek great (he gave us Khan and Klingons, nuff said). But it’s often times telling that his previous gig was Wild Wild West, a show I also love but people from the show admit there was an onset rule “if the story is thin have Bob take his shirt off”. You can see a lot of that mentality in Trek, Bill takes his shirt in most of the worst eps.

TNG was held back by a lot of things, Roddenberry killed the writers room with his “no conflict” edict. And appeasing the obsessive fans was a major mistake, that really began the canon problems that shackled 3 more shows and a bunch of movies.

Reboots are primarily to free the writers from the obligations of an unmanageable canon. It re-opens the universe of infinite possibility. There’s a reason why in the old days Hollywood didn’t do canon, it’s limiting, it winds up being a list of reason you can’t do that. All the writers that worked on late era Trek talk about that, canon constantly cutting off stories. It’s a much freer Trek world if Phase 2 had gotten off the ground, part of Phase 2 was the revelation that TOS was a TV show in the Trek universe, that’s a reboot. Should have been another reboot after Voyager for Enterprise, leave that 21 seasons behind and go forth with a more open universe. I find it interesting, and creative, that JJ did his reboot on camera, most of the time when that decision is made they just punt it, put out word that it’s a new world all that old stuff doesn’t apply and just tell their story.

I never saw much character development in 3 and 4. 2 had quite a bit, but 3 and 4 were just bad.

Too many movies are made these days for blanket statements. Yeah Michael Bay has never met dialog he wouldn’t replace with an explosion. But there’s a lot of character development in JJs first Trek, Kirk evolves dramatically, and I really love the conflict between him and Spock. Things still get blown up, but it’s no Bay movie. I think JJ brings a lot fun in, his Trek is a fun movie, with stuff. Trek had become very not fun.

The replacement Saavak was acted like a liberal vulcan. I couldn't stand her. I liked McCoy's part but three need to be played out for number 4. I hated the artsy farts part where they went back in time but over all I liked 4. Main reason, they got a chance to get off the set.

I like Gene Coon also. The other Gene tried to put too much of himself into Kirk. I think he must of like the shirt being pulled off more than Shatner.

I've been watching other shows by Abrams and sometimes he scores and in other he flops badly. I had high hopes for Super 8 but if was terrible.

I liked the comedy of them interacting with the 20th century in 4, but other than that I found it mostly pretentious and silly. Trek and time travel plots have rarely mixed well in my book. And the whole Spock resurrecting because of the Genesis device just threw me out of 3 and devalues the end of 2, not to mention Shatner running through all possible readings of “Klingon bastard you killed my son” (whom he didn’t know existed until a few weeks ago).

I like Super 8, it’s light, but it’s a solid piece of homage work to ET and Close Encounters. Although it’s funny I like it because I hate ET. Might be the QA guy in me, I’m very good at setting my expectations, I expected an enjoyable piece of fluff from Super 8 and that’s what I got. For his Trek I was hoping for a fun ride and none of Braga’s UN in space crap, and that’s what he delivered.

Boring, hackneyed, soppy, oddly messianic and even when I first saw it when I was a kid and it first came out I felt it talked down to me. Really if it hadn’t had so much hype I might be able to like it, but it was one of my first major Hollywood disappointments. All the advertising had pushed it as the latest EPIC from the Mighty Spielberg and what I got when I got to the theater was a thin pablum kids’ movie that felt like a better produced version of the crap Disney had been cranking out for a decade. If it had been advertised as a kids’ movie I might have liked it, but I walked in expecting Close Encounters and got Apple Dumpling Alien.

It was from the point of view of a child so it had their emotional state as well. Historically it was a pretty risky venture...in 1981, films about children (pre-teens) were box office poison an had been for a long time.

They were box office poison because Disney had cranked out nothing but crap for a long time, which nobody wanted to see.

Really if it had just been advertised that way I might have liked it. But it wasn’t, it was advertised as a grown up movie and I came out of the theater feeling lied to and insulted. I’ve never tried to watch it again, first impressions are lasting impressions.

See! I completely agree with your assertion that the skills of JJ Abrams are right on par with those of the folks responsible for Lost in Space II: Electric Boogaloo!*

Now, we can get on to the important issues like who was hotter Jennie or her sister?

*I mean, they didn’t even have Dr. Smith, Will Robinson, Penny or the Robot! Instead of Dr. Maureen Robinson, they shook-up things by bringing in Major Rayner Fleming from Remo Williams. Way outta left field, man.

134
posted on 04/30/2013 6:52:23 PM PDT
by Army Air Corps
(Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)

The other nice bit about regeneration (aside from the fact that actors can leave the show without the whole thing coming to a halt) is that it allows the production crew to improve the set as the budget improves (”Hey guys, let’s state that the Tardis also regenerates! Now, we can spend the extra 20 pounds the BBC gave us!”). Also, the regeneration schtick makes for some interesting contract negotiations (”You wanna raise? How about we snuff you instead and replace yer arse?”).

135
posted on 04/30/2013 6:58:43 PM PDT
by Army Air Corps
(Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)

A good example of sheer balls in a franchise would also be the Gundam Universes. When those cats get tired of something, they say, “Aw, screw it. Let’s just start a whole new universe that also features giant robots blasting things. Okay, who’s ready for lunch?”

136
posted on 04/30/2013 7:01:27 PM PDT
by Army Air Corps
(Four Fried Chickens and a Coke)

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